Psychology is the study of the mind and the working of the mind. It is a relatively new science when compared to the other sciences. Psychology was born from Philosophy and to understand the history of psychology one must also wish to seek and understand the history of philosophy. Goodwin (2008) states, "Thus, what came to be called the "New Psychology" began to emerge as a separate discipline about 130 years ago." Major developments in philosophy that concerned the mental functioning is traced back to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Hippocrates.
The philosopher Descartes was trained in the deductive analysis of knowledge or the world created by Aristotle by Jesuits. After he left the school he realized that the knowledge he had gained there was not as useful as he thought and sought to gain knowledge. In the 1620's Descartes was more scientist than philosopher and he was the first to discover that retinal images are inverted (Goodwin, 2008). Descartes refused to accept information as truth if it could be doubted. He questioned the difference between innate and derived ideas. Descartes felt that the ability to reason is something that all humans are born with and that some types of knowledge are not directly dependent of sensual experiences is called an innate idea. Many concepts we consider and seek to understand are the result of our experience and Descartes called this form of idea a derived idea.
[...] George Berkeley contributed to the psychology becoming a discipline with his analysis of the human sensory processes. Berkeley theorized tat our perceptions of distance, size and locations are judgments dependent on the individual's experience. Goodwin (2008) says, An important theme of Berkeley's theory of vision, clear from the opening sentence of the monocular cues quote, is that we do not see objects directly; rather we make judgments about them based on visual information and our experiences.” He examined judging depth for objects near us and outlined the description of convergence. [...]
[...] Rational monads are responsible for consciousness but Leibniz proposed continuum of awareness that implies a level of unawareness. Goodwin (2008) says, Leibniz identified three levels of awareness called apperception, perception and petites perceptions.” Apperception is the highest level of awareness like as when a human focuses their entire attention to information in order to comprehend it fully and apply it to personal need. Perception is the awareness of something but without as much sharp focus as apperception. Petites perceptions were below the level of awareness but vital to the occurrence of higher levels of perception. [...]
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